Monumental Memories: A Discussion of Xu Weixin and his Pedagogic Art. Chinese Historical Figures, 1966-1976
Stephanie H. Donald
(Professor of Chinese Media Studies, University of Sydney)
Tuesday, 4:30-6:30 p.m. May 19
Joseph Regenstein Library, Seminar room 207
Abstract
Physical, aesthetic and emotional traces of difficult times may be both formally elided and yet crucially embedded in contemporary practice in arts and media, and this is quite evidently so in Chinese responses to the Cultural Revolution. This paper pays attention to the analysis of a series of images which have been constructed pedagogically and self-consciously to commemorate and enlighten the 80hou generation. In this discussion I explore the status of image recall, trans-regional and trans-generational ways of seeing, and the status of history in the process of of looking through and for affect in making sense of the series. The artist Xu Weixin has attempted to create a pedagogical, yet monumental archive in paint, but he has also tried to suggest a redemptive relationship between them and now. I discuss the role of mimesis in his work, and the degree to which we can understand these paintings as fragments of dialogue across generations, or as a soliloquy?
